Team building Part 2: Honesty is the Key!

The second in a series of 2 articles giving a slightly dissimilar viewpoint on sufficient team building, condensed from an customary argument presented by the author, John Roberts. John is a Freelance Training advisor and director of JayrConsulting Ltd. Part 1 ( an additional one Brick in the Wall ) dealt with choosing and construction the first team. Part 2 deals with the culture that need to be in place to run the team verily effectively. The ideas expressed are personal opinions built up from many years of sense in the Electronics/Aerospace industry, the Armed Forces, the Telecoms industry and the Training industry. There is no advice of this being a 100% explication applicable to or workable in all situations, but it is aimed at getting population to think face of the norm and question the 'normal' way of doing things.

1. Honesty - The Key!

Team Building Training

It verily is that simple! The basic foundation of construction and running verily flourishing teams is Total honesty! Sounds simple, but it can be one of the hardest things to implement due to existing workplace cultures and peoples long-term conditioning to them. If you are not ready to implement this culture change, you will only ever have functional 'teams' that are purely paying 'lip service' to the whole idea of team building.

Being honest starts here! You cant pretend to be honest, or only implement some parts of it, whether as a team member or as a team leader. If you are not going to give it 100% - Give it up, because the rest depends on this to work properly!

There are two cut off parts to honesty within the team scenario and both are equally important:

(a) Being honest with other people

You have to learn to be honest with everyone. If man is not performing properly-Tell them as soon as possible, and help them to overcome the cause. If man is performing well-Tell them as soon as possible, and help them to do even better.

If there is good news about the project/team/company-Tell population as soon as possible, without hiding things and deliver praise where appropriate.
If there is Bad news about the project/team/company-Tell population as soon as possible, without hiding things and discuss what can be done about it at a team and personal level-ask for input and ideas to decide things. Most population can deal with most situations well, as long as they feel they are being kept informed and involved.

Make sure that you are doing your share of the teams work, to the best of your ability. If the team are having to cover for you, you are not being honest with them.

If you make a mistake- admit to it, as soon as potential and if critical get help to decide it. If you try and hide your mistakes you are not being honest and it just leads to more work for others in the long run.
Don't perpetuate rumours! It is one of the fastest ways to break down trust in a team culture. If you don't know something is a fact-don't repeat it!

(b) Being honest with yourself

For a lot of population this can verily be highly difficult to achieve, due to long term conditioning in a competitive work place, but once started it tends to build on itself as long as every person is verily committed to long-term success of the team construction process. You have to verily look at yourself deeply and verily and work at correcting your personel behaviour patterns and shortcomings.

If you can't cope with something-tell man and get some help with it. No one is exquisite and we all need help sometimes. In a good team environment, nobody is going to think less of you for requesting help-just the opposite if it helps to get things done.

Be honest about your skills and abilities beginning with your c.v. !). If not you will be found out eventually, but by that time, you may have let a lot of other population down!

Don't steal credit/ideas from other population and put them send as your own. Any gain for you is only short term and it is one of the quickest ways of destroying trust among your team.

Question your commitment and work ethos continually-Are you verily giving 100% endeavor all the time? If not-why not -do you need to seek help or are you just being lazy?

Don't lie! It's infectious in a team environment. If you want a day off- take a leave day-don't keep re-burying your grandmother!

Admit when you are wrong in a discussion-and apologise!

Don't moan and grumble about work - if you don't like being there -Leave!

2. Communication

Communication is one of the most leading factors in flourishing teams. To be sufficient it must be continuous and wholly Open - both between team members and between the team leader and their team. There should be no secrets. The team need to know how they are affected by corporate plans and decisions. Members need to know if they are doing things correctly. The team leader needs to know if their team members have any ideas or problems that should be acted upon. population acknowledge better if they know the facts - even to bad news! (I had a team where they all volunteered to take a 10% pay cut to save a team member from redundancy, when the financial figures were explained to them openly!)

This Doesn'T mean that you need to have interminable 'formal' team meetings! population should be encouraged to talk to each other and to the team leader all of the time. A good team leader will set aside time every day, (Yes, you can do it, if you are organised!), purely to get around and talk to their team. The better your transportation is, the less meetings you will need to have!

3. Trust

Trust between team members and between the team and team leader Must be absolute. If you don't trust population to get on and do their job - why are they in your team? If you trust population to do a job, you have to relinquish power to them to make their own decisions - and they have to be responsible for those decisions! Team members must have trust in the team leader - that they have their best interests at heart and are working for team rather than personel success. In the greatest team, population have to depend on each other for their lives - that can only be done with trust in your fellow team members.

4. Conflicts and Compromise

Teams are made of People! You have to expect conflicts and confrontations. They should not be arbitrarily stamped upon - population have to be made aware that at some point they will have to compromise with other population in order to persisting functioning as an sufficient team. Members should be encouraged not to hide conflict, but to work it out and arrive at a compromise. The team leader should try and be aware of any conflicts and help to decide them where necessary. Don't expect your team to never argue - they are all dissimilar people, and just like in a family, there is nothing wrong with a healthy argument, as long as it is resolved

5. Chinese Councils

All team members should have an input to planning and decisions regarding the team. population in the team should be treated as equals. The team leader is not in that position because they are 'better", it's just that they have dissimilar skills to the others. The team leader is not the only man that may have good ideas and should always be willing to accept input from others and where critical amend plans and decisions regarding the team and its objectives. However, every person should be aware that at the end, the team leader has the greatest responsibility and therefore the final say in any decisions, having taken into list the input from other team members. This should be a regular ongoing procedure.

6. Assessment and reward

Forget 'Annual Assessments', Competency grids and pay rises based on personel performance! What matters is, "Is the Team successful?" The team leader should be constantly aware of how team members are performing and giving them feedback and assistance where critical as the task progresses. It is no good leaving it until some later point to let population know if they are not achieving what is required or patting them on the back if things are going well. population need constant feedback -with honesty!
Reward should be based on the success (or failure!) of the whole team, not individuals, so that population are encouraged to make sure that every person in the team is pulling together to perform the team goals -not trying to score 'smarty points' for their own personel advancement. (This would not work in a 'sales' environment, which is why sales population tend to work as individuals rather than as teams!)

7. Buddies

Team members must all be 'Buddies' with each other. This doesn't mean that you have to be close friends or socialise with each other! What it means is that team members have to hold one an additional one at all times. every person has 'off days', and team members should notice when man else is not performing 100% and offer help and hold to get them straight through this period. Sometimes all it will take is a joke or remark to buck man up or they may need help with a particular task that is getting on top of them. All members should get into the habit of 'watching out' for each other. There is no shame in seeking or accepting help - we all need it sometimes. We all have dissimilar skills and abilities and team members should be encouraged to make use of each other's skills to perform the team objective as efficiently as possible. I was never very good at producing diagrams for presentations, but I had man in my team who was great at it, and I would always ask her to critique my work so that I could yield a better concluded product.

8. No Blame - No Shame

Everyone Makes Mistakes! The incommunicable is to have a culture where population are not ashamed to admit to having made a mistake! That way, mistakes can be rectified quickly, and more importantly, learned from! If man makes a mistake (deletes a file or something), you don't want them to feel that they will be penalised or marked down in some way. You need them to tell man and if critical seek help to rectify it as soon as possible. (Needs 'honesty', as above!)

Summary

You may have noticed something in reading the above? No jargon, no 'hype', no 'games', no 'exercises', no 'concepts'! - Not Necessary! flourishing teams are all about People, their natural skills, abilities and relationships. Running a flourishing team is very much like running a flourishing house and most of the values are the same - But, it will not work Without Honesty as above! Remember that is probably the hardest thing to perform due to human nature and the conditioning that population are subjected to in the normally competitive culture of most work places, but it is worth the endeavor if you verily want to perform sufficient team building.

Think about all of the above - how much of it currently applies to teams in your workplace? Could you implement this? Remember - unless you start with Honesty, it will not work, and you will always just be going straight through the motions of team building!

As always I am wholly open to any comments - the whole idea of this argument is to get population mental and discussing what they do in their teams and how it could be improved.

Acknowledgements

Adapted from an customary narrative by John Roberts, freelance training consultant, Director of JayrConsulting Ltd., www.jayrconsulting.co.uk. John can be contacted at john.roberts@jayrconsulting.co.uk

This narrative may be freely reproduced / modified and used in any way, providing this acknowledgement is left in its entirety.

Team building Part 2: Honesty is the Key!